Light On Dark Water

On the 9/11 Anniversary

Halfway between the September 11, 2001, and today–in September of 2006–I posted this assessment of the event and its consequences. It still represents my view pretty accurately.

I can't quite put my finger on the reasons, but I keep thinking–no, I should say I keep feeling–that there is something a bit unseemly in the ceremonies and rememberances that have been going on for the past few days. The closest I can come to articulating it is the remark by my wife that we are "wallowing in it." Actually she said "wallering," in the southern way, which is not necessarily the way she would naturally pronounce it, but which carries a certain emphasis. Interestingly, I saw the same sentiment mentioned at National Review Online.

Maclin Horton

12 responses to “On the 9/11 Anniversary”

  1. Res Ex

    It seems like it exists for journalists. Anniversaries give them something to write about. Going to get coffee after mass this am, I walked through a student cafeteria part of the U this morning where there are TVs and they were doing a minute by minute repetition of the day ten years ago, what happened at 10.35, what happened at 10.38 etc etc. At that point, I hit my 9/11 threshold.

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  2. Mac

    Yes, and also for politicians. But I doubt there would be as much of this if we didn’t have the continual ferment of 24/7 news media.
    Some months ago I saw a similar walk-through of the events (just happened across it after watching something on TV) and I must say I was impressed again by just how traumatic the events were for New York.

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  3. Res Ex

    About how traumatic, I couldn’t agree more. I grew up in Lower Manhatten. When I heard about it, early afternoon, English time, I was in a store and I assured everyone there that this was a hoax, that such a thing could not happen. I thought it was one of those ‘War of the Worlds’ things – when War of the Worlds was done on the radio, and people began to believe it was happening. In other words, I responded with complete disbelief.
    But I still think without the 7/24 news cycle we would, of course, be remembering the 10th anniversary, but we would not be going through it minute by minute.

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  4. Marianne

    That day I was working in Rosslyn, Virginia, in an office building about two miles from the Pentagon. I heard the news about the plane hitting the first tower in NYC as I was driving to the office, about the second plane a few minutes after I arrived there, and then about the plane hitting the Pentagon a short time later. We sat around the office for about another hour and then we were all told to go home, just in case of more planes. I was totally freaked, and I don’t think I ever felt comfortable in the D.C. area again.
    Anyway, all this is by way of saying that I think New Yorkers are incredibly brave.

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  5. Mac

    The memory is different for those of us who had no reason to feel any sense of personal danger. We were horrified and angry, but not afraid. Or at least that’s the way I felt. However, I did, for months to come, expect to hear of other attacks around the country. I still think the terrorists were pretty stupid not to do that–smaller things in less prominent places could have done a lot of damage to the fabric of society, and would have been fairly easy to do. But either there just weren’t enough of them or they were too intent on doing the really big stuff.

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  6. Mac

    I find this a very effective memorial.

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  7. Louise

    “wallering” – yep – that’s what’s wrong with it.

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  8. Anne-Marie

    The attacks were significant for me because they showed me that deep down I’m not completely American. My parents were American, I was born a US citizen, almost all my relatives still live in the US, I’m married to an American and have lived here for almost all my adult life–but I could not say, or feel, “we” had been attacked. I was surprised, and my husband was somewhat scandalized.
    To me there are two off-putting aspects of the wallowing. First is the cheapened notion of heroism: everyone who died and anyone remotely like them is glorified. At mass this morning, our parish honoured military personnel, first responders,… and all government workers!
    Second is patriotic pro-American sentiment coupled with a refusal to name the anti- side, or even to acknowledge that there is one. The nation’s “heroes” are described as victims of “tragedies,” rather than of attacks or terrorists. Today’s mass readings spoke of forgiveness, but in some of the coverage you’d be hard pressed to see anything to forgive.

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  9. Res Ex

    Gosh, for me it is partly about America – NYC, my personal holy land – but not entirely. A high proportion of those who died in the Twin Towers were British (between 200 and 300).

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  10. Craig

    Speaking of the coverage: I am one of the few who did not see any live coverage of that day ten years ago. I was on vacation in Italy at the time — I was atop the Duomo in Florence when the planes hit, and I had no idea it was happening. I saw a few newspaper headlines on the following days (‘Apolcalisse!’). I was most surprised by the attack on the Pentagon. To tell the truth, I had never heard of the World Trade Center before that day. I realized that something dramatic had happened, something terrible, but it didn’t have the visceral impact on me the way it did for many people.
    It wasn’t until some years later that I sat down to watch ‘re-reruns’ of the live coverage. It was appalling, but of course it didn’t have the same dramatic effect as it would have had I seen it live.
    I watched coverage from several of the major broadcasters. I remember noting that when the first plane had hit, there was speculation (as was natural) that it was an accident. When the second plane hit, however, some of the broadcasters carried on in a mealy-mouthed sort of way: ‘We don’t know what is happening. This is a terrible tragedy. We are awaiting confirmation. Etc.” On Fox News — and I have no love for Fox News, but this impressed me — the second plane hit and the announcer immediately stopped, paused a few seconds, and said, “This is no accident.” From that simple sentence, a host of repercussions followed, and it took him only a few seconds to see it. Like I said, the other networks seemed to be stepping gingerly around the main point. (As they are doing still, in some cases.)

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  11. Mac

    The use of the generic “tragedy” has irked me from the beginning. Some of the…I started to call it “celebration”…observance makes me think of Princess Diana’s death and funeral. There’s too much emphasis on the emotions themselves, almost as if they’re an end in themselves.
    I definitely felt this as an American, though I have no connection at all to NYC, and have only visited it twice. A lot of southerners still like to think of themselves as being apart from the rest of the country, especially the northeast, an impulse which is reinforced by widespread disdain for the south in other regions, especially the northeast. And I confess to having a bit of that spirit. So it was striking to see how deeply angry people here were. I never once heard anyone voice a sentiment along the lines of “who cares about those Yankees?” However much southerners might gripe about the northeast, in the end there seemed to be a recognition that NYC is in a sense the American city, and a ferocious reaction to the attack on it. A lot of “NYFD” window and bumper stickers appeared, and a stretch of I65 was renamed “Heroes’ Highway”.

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  12. Louise

    There’s too much emphasis on the emotions themselves, almost as if they’re an end in themselves.
    Emotions are marvellous things. In sane people, they are attached somewhat to principles. That is what is sometimes missing in modern media coverage of events.

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